


Whatever the Hell he Wants

by Wikketkrikket



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Asexuality, Character Study, Gen, Maybe implied, Non-Explicit Sex, Not Canon Compliant, One-Shot, Other, biromantic, no pairings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikketkrikket/pseuds/Wikketkrikket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark has a Problem: He hates kissing.<br/>Steve Rogers has a Secret: He is seeing someone. (Not Fury)<br/>Tony Stark has a Secret: He is indifferent to sex.<br/>Steve Rogers has a Problem: Tony keeps giving out the emergency Avengers number to his one-night stands.<br/>Why? Because he is Tony Stark, and he does whatever the hell he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever the Hell he Wants

**Author's Note:**

> This... I don't even know how to explain this. Totally not canon, obviously, and mostly a challenge to myself to see if I could a) write convincingly about asexuality and b) keep it vaguely in character for Tony. Specifically, I wanted to explore a biromantic but asexual Tony, which to my understanding means he desires/experiences romantic attraction for people without any sexual desire for them. There may be better terms for what I've written, or I may have gone wrong completely! I also apologise if I've gone so wrong I've become offensive. Please feel free to correct me in either case- It's always good to become less ignorant and more educated :)
> 
> That said, the majority of research for this fic comes from the super-helpful AVEN wiki and their forums, so please check it out if the subject interests you. In the meantime, enjoy!

Whatever the Hell he Wants

 

At first, he’d just thought it was his age.

                After all, intellectual intelligence didn’t necessarily equate to emotional maturity, even for geniuses. It certainly didn’t equate to _physical_ maturity, as thirteen year old Tony was painfully aware. He was small for his age as it was, and skipping several grades meant his peers towered over him, barely noticing he was there at all unless he made them, playing the class clown. And after working so hard to be accepted, to be noticed, to be _included,_ of course he was going to do his best to discuss which of the girls had the best legs, which one would be the best at making out. Yet, for him, it was all arbitrary. It didn’t mean anything. He didn’t _want_ to make out with them.

                Not that he had been exactly overwhelmed with offers, back then. Oh, the girls had _liked_ him, liked his money, liked his charm, been wrapped around his finger; but they all thought he was ‘cute’. Between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, Tony had actually willingly worked out regularly, trying to beef up, figuring he would finally shake off the young-children-and-small-animals treatment if he was a bit buffer. Turns out even muscles didn’t really help when you were still short and had your mother’s round face.

                When he was fifteen and the age excuse didn’t really cut it anymore, he’d tried to persuade himself that he just hadn’t met the right girl. He tried turning to girls his own age, started asking them on dates. He held their hands when they looked like they wanted him to, even kissed them when it seemed like he was supposed to. He hadn’t really seen what the fuss was about. He liked the idea of hand holding and it was kind of nice, at first, when it was just a reassuring pressure, a comforting presence, a reminder that you were here and alive and others were here and alive- but then it got all sweaty and gross or your arm went dead.  Kissing, however, seemed like it was massively overrated. It felt unnatural. Mouths were for eating and spitting and talking out of, for breathing. He couldn’t understand why the human race had developed to supposedly get pleasure out of pressing their air holes together and half suffocating each other. The first time a girl- he didn’t remember her name now- had kissed him with tongue, he had almost choked. She’d practically been licking the inside of his mouth, their spit had mixed together, and who knew what was in that stuff? Disgusting. Okay, so, she had been a teenage girl and an inexperienced, if enthusiastic, kisser; but even as an adult, Tony was sure there weren’t many feelings in the world worse than the feeling of someone else’s tongue rolling around in his mouth. If he had his way, kisses would never happen; not the weird, pointless, mouth-bumping kind nor the tongue-invasion kind. There were better, less unhygienic ways, to show affection.

                Hugging, for example. Tony could understand hugging. He had first become aware of the comparative greatness of hugging when he had been at MIT. Hugs were versatile, multi-purpose, you could adapt them for almost any situation. You could hug to say hello, or goodbye. You could hug to say ‘you’re my friend’ or ‘you’re more than my friend’. You could hold someone close, feel them there, or keep them at arm’s length. You had control. And the _smells_. Second-day shirt smells, been-in-the-cupboard-for-too-long smells, laundry detergent, shampoo, perfumes, aftershave. You could learn a lot about someone from their hugs; and so far as he was concerned, there was little that felt more pleasant than a freshly-ironed shirt against your skin, or a woollen jumper under your fingers. Most importantly, you chose the length and intimacy of a hug, and no-one was trying to put bits of themselves inside you. Of course, after one drunken night at a club, Tony learnt to keep these thoughts to himself, and the hugs to a bare minimum. He figured it was a weird quirk of his upbringing, the lack of hugs from his parents growing up or something. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with liking hugs, anything wrong with him.

                Back then, though, on the first kissing with tongue day, he hadn’t known that hugs were good for ticking the ‘need-for-human-contact’ box. He hadn’t really known anything except that having someone else trying to eat your face from the inside was not only massively overrated, it was also super gross. That was the day he concluded he must be gay.

                It had seemed logical. After all, he was almost sixteen, he was making out with girls and yet it didn’t give him any sense of achievement. For most guys his age, it was the big score, the ultimate goal, to get a girl to kiss you, but for Tony it didn’t even have the savour of victory. It was just kind of boring. Sometimes girls didn’t even want to _do_ anything, they just wanted to sit around and kiss, or sit around and talk and kiss. Tony didn’t want to disappoint them, and he didn’t really want to kiss more than he had to, so he would talk instead. He would talk about science and new developments and coding, because it was the mid-eighties and computers were the future; and even then, even before he had fully grasped his own potential, it had made him feel limitless, excited. Tongue-girl told him, not without some bitterness, that he found ‘science stuff’ more exciting than her, and she was absolutely right. He didn’t see what that could mean, unless he was gay.

                So he started trying to look at boys the way he knew he was supposed to look at girls. He looked at them in pieces, who had nice eyes or nice hair or a nice smile; and some of them did. But the appraisal was cold, like looking at works of art. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate their beauty, it was just that he didn’t see how it was supposed to affect him.

                He started to wonder if he was just maybe really selfish, really self-centred. Incapable of love because he loved himself too much. A few times, he tried to force himself to feel something he didn’t, and it never worked out. He thought it would never happen. He began to think he was broken, and try harder, and then feel like he’d split into parts that were even smaller.  And then, there was Christopher.

                Christopher was probably pretty smart out on the street, but in MIT terms he wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the box. Compared to Tony, it was like a matchstick in the sun and they both knew it. He would look at Tony in total awe and shake his head in disbelief, and Tony liked that. He liked that whenever he walked into a room, and walked around until he caught Christopher’s eye, the other guy’s face would light up. He liked that Christopher was always genuinely pleased to see him. He liked that Christopher never resented Tony’s success, or even got bogged down by his own failures. It was Tony’s first time falling in love, so, in short, he was pretty convinced that Christopher was perfect. He even liked, though he knew he shouldn’t and that it was pretty indecent, the fact that Christopher had a girlfriend. It meant she could handle the kissing side of things, and Tony could get on with the important stuff. Besides, she made Christopher happy, and a happy Christopher was much better than a drunk one- which is what an unhappy Christopher amounted to.

                But she didn’t make him happy in the same _way_ that Tony did. He was much better with outings, gifts, surprises- Christopher would shake his head, positively beaming, and say ‘Awesome. Perfect. Thanks, Tony’, and Tony would feel that rush of satisfaction, that buzz he always got when a machine worked or a theory was proved right, the satisfaction that he had gotten it right in a way that only he could. He liked making Christopher happy. He liked having someone care whether he lived or died beyond the impact it would have on Stark Enterprises share prices.

                He took it too far, of course. He almost always took it too far. The amazed, awed head shakes got less frequent, so Tony tried more and more. Christopher began to look less pleased when Tony entered a room, and finally like he wished Tony hadn’t come at all.

                “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know.” He said one day, after Tony had casually invited him to come skiing over winter break. “We’re pals. I’m not going to lose interest if you stop buying me stuff.”

                “I’m not buying you stuff, I’m inviting you to stuff.” Tony had argued. “Are you really going to leave me alone with my parents?” 

Christopher had sighed and dropped the matter; and Tony tried even harder to keep him happy. Which, of course, had the total opposite effect:

“Tony,” Christopher had said to him in private one day. “Look, I’m sorry, but it isn’t going to happen.”

“What isn’t?” Tony had played dumb.

“I don’t know, whatever it is you’re trying to make happen. I’m not going to fall into your arms and start kissing you just because you get us into the premier of _Lethal Weapon._ ”

“I don’t want you to kiss me.” Tony said, which was true; but Christopher didn’t believe him.

“Look, let’s just give it a rest for a while, yeah? I don’t want to lead you on or anything so…”

“You’re not!” Tony’s voice had come out higher than he would have liked back then, and would get even higher in his memory, until it was just a pathetic squeak when he looked back. “Chris, it’s fine, you don’t…”

“Sorry, Tony. It’s for the best, okay?”

And so Tony had been dumped by someone who he wasn’t even dating. Two days after that, angry at two days of silence from Christopher, Tony had told Howard he was gay. He’d done it because he had wanted a fight, wanted to argue about it, but Howard had just shrugged it off and told him he could do whatever the hell he wanted as long as he didn’t screw up their business. Which, looking back, was probably Howard doing his best to be supportive, but at the time Tony had been upset, and mad, and looking for someone to take it out on, and had turned it into a huge fight about Howard never caring about him at all. A few days after that, Howard and his mom died; and like the good friend Christopher was, he called Tony the second he saw it in the papers. Tony never called him back, never picked up, no matter how many times he tried. He took the number of attempts as a measure of how much Christopher had ever actually really cared about him. The number of attempts was not as large as Tony had wanted.

With a company to run, romance had been off the cards for a while after that.  Unfortunately, there were certain _expectations_. As one of the richest, most powerful business men in the world, Tony came into contact with a lot of beautiful women. He got quite good at picking them out, working out which lady at the party was drawing the most sidelong glances, the most outright stares. Who had the most socially-acceptable figure and the dress to match it, who had the most fashionable haircut that framed their face in the right way. Yes, like any experienced art critic, Tony got quite good at recognising beauty on sight. And then, well, he had to perform. It was part of the lifestyle, a downside he had to accept.

The thing was, what Tony Stark really loved wasn’t beautiful women and sex, it was loud parties in lavish settings. He liked getting the designers in, changing the space around, making it beautiful and showy and extravagant. He liked having too much to drink and losing himself in alcohol and music, he liked music so loud you could feel it coming up through the floors and walls- even if it was a fancy party and it was all classical music, he liked the elegance of it, the beauty of it. Most of all, he liked surrounding himself with people; examining them, getting to know their quirks, making them happy. He was never stingy with his wealth, even in those days. Unless you were a total dickbag, Tony Stark was in the business of making your day; and many days he made. He’d be the talk of the town, and there was nothing better than that.

And that was part of the problem. Sex was as necessary a part of his carefully cultivated image as a clean-cut three piece suit. Tony Stark was not like his father. Tony Stark was bringing Stark Industries into a new era. Tony Stark was young, dynamic, free-spirited. The wild party animal, the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. In short, Tony Stark had to be having sex, and lots of it. Besides which, the women, the beautiful women, well, after all that effort, they deserved to be flirted with, if flirting was what they wanted. And being a genius, flirting was easy for Tony. You just had to pay attention to what worked and what didn’t, pay attention to their body language and work from there. After that, well, Tony Stark was nothing if not dedicated. He wasn’t in the business of leading people on. If she wanted sex, that was what they would do.

If he was honest, he at least preferred sex to kissing. There was still some animal part of his brain, he supposed, that would obey the biological imperative; especially if he was drunk enough to feel daring. Also, the women were usually too drunk to realise how bad he actually was at it; drunk enough that the lady he lost his virginity to had had no idea he was a virgin, even though it should have been obvious. Some days were easier than others, of course, and sometimes he had to cover his lack of interest with an excessive amount of foreplay, but a lot of ladies liked that. Tony, meanwhile, was fairly indifferent to the whole process.

What he liked, actually, was afterwards. If hugs were good, post-sex cuddles were better. There was an incredible intimacy to it, with skin pressed to skin, but no expectations. They were satisfied, and he was happy that he was able to do that, and sometimes, then, he would think that if the whole of a relationship was like that, he would be happy to have one. Waking up with someone every day, someone who would always be happy to see you, who you could buy flowers for, who would tell you things they wouldn’t tell anything else, who would know you better than anyone else- if he could have that without the tongue-wrestling, Tony thought, he’d head for the altar now.

But it didn’t work like that. Like everything else in the world, it was give and take. So Tony would give them what they wanted, and then, that night, he would be able to fall asleep listening to the sound of another human being breathing contentedly beside him, and feel their reassuring weight pressing down on the other side of the bed. And in those moments, yes, he was happy.

 

 

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

 

                Sometimes, unfortunately, the whole thing got entirely out of hand. Such as the time he went to get his morning coffee (or afternoon, or evening, or whatever time it was when he woke up) and found Steve sitting in there, nominally watching the kitchen television but clearly lying in wait. At least he waited until Tony was fully caffeinated, making small talk about what Tony was working on in the lab, before coming to the point.

                “I took another call for you this morning, Stark.” He said, with a slightly pained expression.

                “Oh? Did they leave a message?”

                “No.” Steve said. “It was a booty call.”

                “Ah.” Tony said, trying to keep a straight face. “Well, I hope you enjoyed it.”

                “It’s meant to be a number for the Avengers, Stark. You can’t keep giving it out as a personal number.” Steve said. “It’s supposed to be for Shield and the police. Emergency only. It’s not meant to be your personal sex line.”

                “I didn’t think you knew what a sex line was.”

                “I get lonely.” Steve replied, and, as usual, Tony couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Which, actually, was a fairly good sign the Captain was joking after all. Steve had a habit of sounding jokey when he was being serious, trying to soften the blow and show there were no hard feelings about whatever he was trying to lecture you about; while his humour remained consistently deadpan, the master of the poker face. In fact, he was pretty good at poker too, and Cheat. Barton was terrible at both, as was Thor- although Thor had ruined Cheat for them all since saying he could not turn ‘dishonesty and disloyalty’ into a game, and expected better of them.

                “Stark, you aren’t listening.” Steve had eventually broken and laughed at his own joke, but Tony realised too late that the laughter had stopped and the conversation restarted. “Look, if you want to have girls over that’s your business, but don’t give them the number for the Avengers, okay?”

                “You just don’t understand.” Tony groaned. “It’s not enough to just give them breakfast and a tour of the Tower any more. I have to give them a number to get them to leave.”

                “So give them your number.”

                “No way, I don’t want to talk to them.”

                “I don’t get it.” Steve sighed. “You bring some beautiful, intelligent women up here. Would it be so bad to actually have a relationship with one of them?”

                _Yes_ , Tony wanted to say. _Because then I’d have to keep having sex with them and they’d figure out I hate it_.

                There was silence. But not the expectant silence of an infuriatingly patient man waiting for an answer, the silence of an unexpected answer, received, but not understood. Tony looked at Steve’s face and he _knew_.

                He’d thought out loud. A bad habit from too much time alone in the lab, talking to equipment, Jarvis, anything to bounce ideas off. But now he’d thought out loud here, in the kitchen, in front of Steve.

                Well.

                He drank his coffee. There was nothing else to do. And maybe if he was more awake, he wouldn’t let slip any more embarrassing personal details.

                “How can you hate sex?” Steve asked, after a moment.

                “I don’t know.” Tony shrugged. “Hate is a strong word. I _definitely_ hate kissing, that’s pretty gross. With sex, I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. Look, just because I do it- and not that much anymore, by the way- doesn’t mean I have to like it. Okay?”

                “No, not how can _you_ hate sex,” Steve tried. “I mean… how can anyone hate sex? Sex is, uh, it’s good.”

                That was it. Tony rarely laughed in public, but he lost it at that. “Wow, a glowing review there, Cap. I didn’t think you knew what sex _was_.”

                “Captain America definitely doesn’t.” Steve shrugged. “Steve Rogers on the other hand…”

                “I knew it.” Tony said, trying to control his laughter. “Steve Rogers, total man whore.”

                He’d crossed a line. Steve had stopped laughing and his frowny face was back. “ _In relationships_. You’re hardly one to talk.”

                Tony shrugged. “I have to do it, it’s expected.”

                “So let me get this straight.” Steve said, looking confused. “You’re telling me- _seriously_ \- that you, _Tony Stark_ , self-styled Playboy, doesn’t actually enjoy sex. Okay, fine, I’ll bite. But you do it anyway because… it’s expected.”

                “Yes.” Tony said, unnecessarily defensive.

                “I have never heard anything so dumb.”

                “Yeah?” It was Tony’s turn to be offended now. “We don’t all have your shiny family-man reputation, Steve.  The modern age is all about image, PR, _brand recognition_. People like me like this. So yeah, it’s _expected_ , and yeah, I have to do it!”

                Steve snorted. Tony resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

                “You want to know what I think?” He asked.

                “No.” Tony said petulantly. He was ignored.

                “I think defying expectations is your ‘thing’.” Steve said, complete with air quotes. He was adapting to this time period just fine. “I think you’re the man who took a multi-million dollar weapons company-”

                “Multi- _billion_.”

                “A multi- _billion_ dollar weapons company, decided to stop making weapons and came out the other side just fine. I think you pride yourself on being a stubborn asshole who never listens to anybody and thinks he knows better than everyone. Honestly, at this point I think the only thing people expect of you is to do whatever the hell you want.”

                 “Can I remind you of that the next time you order us around in a fight?” Tony asked. It was childish. It was all he could think of to say.

                “No.” Steve said, getting up. “If you don’t want to bring girls back, don’t bring them back. And if you do bring them back, don’t give them the Avengers number.”

                “Can I give them your number?”

                “Better not.”

                “And why not, Mr ‘Sex-is-uh-good’? I have excellent taste. Objectively.”

                “I’m seeing someone.”

                “ _What_? Who?”

                But Steve had already gone. Damn him.

               

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

 

                On the list of ‘Things-you-expect-Steve-to-say’, ‘I’m seeing someone’ was fairly close to the bottom. Not that Tony thought Steve was like him, or anything, he was perfectly prepared to imagine him as the lovelorn soldier. But he’d been sure Steve would be the self-denying, self-flagellating kind, the my-life-is-too-dangerous-to-be-in-a-relationship kind. So it could only be another hero, or maybe a Shield Agent. And as Steve had never brought anyone back to the Tower, it had to be someone they knew and, if the relationship was on the down-low and Steve wouldn’t tell them who it was, it had to be someone they didn’t like. Which was why Tony had no choice but to assume it was Fury, and to tell the others so.

                Steve, it turned out, was not best pleased.

                “Why, Steve, you’re looking pretty… _Fury-_ ous.” Tony said, before Steve could say anything. He didn’t care, he’d been waiting weeks to make that joke. And, just for a second, he swore the mildly-irritated poker face on his target flickered.

                “If I was dating Fury, I’d get him to set the helicarriers on you.” Steve said.

                “‘If’? No need to be shy, Cap, really. I’m happy for you.”

                Steve sighed deeply. “If I bring her over, will you shut up?”

                “Hmm, maybe. Depends what she’s like.”

                “Fine. But throw a party or something, I’m not bringing her over just to be stared at.”

                Now he was talking Tony’s language.

 

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

 

                Also close to the bottom on the list of ‘Things-you-expect-Steve-to-say’: ‘Biromantic asexual’.

                If Tony ever stopped laughing, he thought he was almost certainly going to feel very _biromantic_ indeed.

                It had been too long since they’d had a party. Which was the reason Tony had given for having the current party, seeing as Steve had vetoed ‘Checking out Cap’s girlfriend’ being included on the invitations. As that was their real purpose, however, the guest list had been necessarily restricted, mainly to heroes and their plus ones, people who could be counted on to keep Steve’s personal life off the front pages. Pepper had been in charge of the guest list, and had kept it down to a modest twenty or so, barely a party at all. Still, it was nice to have an intimate gathering; and Pepper knew just the right people to invite to make the group gel. He might be, Tony realised, a little in love with Pepper too. She wasn’t even a genius, but she was still the most brilliant person he knew. She was smart and focused, dedicated, everything he wanted to be. He vowed that night to never date her. She deserved everything. She deserved all the best things in the world, including a lover who was nuts about her and gave the most fantastic sex.

               He was pretty drunk, actually. But it was all in a good cause. He wasn’t just normal drunk, he was _scientifically_ drunk. For science.

                It was all Steve’s fault anyway. He’d turned up with his disappointingly ordinary girlfriend who’d he met at an art gallery or a café or a charity event (details were boring and Tony disliked them), and talked for a while about the disappointingly ordinary dates they had been on (Tony was going to fix that- Steve was getting tickets for two somewhere exotic this Christmas) and then the girl had needed to leave because she had to get up particularly early the next day for some important aspect of her ordinary-person job. Steve had seen her home like the gentleman he was, and returned to the party that was beginning to wind down. He had been drinking nothing but soda, and Tony, like any good party host, had called him out on it; at which point Steve had reminded him that it was ‘physically impossible’ for him to get drunk.

                That was, in Tony’s opinion, a pretty bold claim to make. He was well acquainted with Steve’s superfast metabolism that meant he ate enough to feed, appropriately, a small army; but, if enough food could fill him up, surely enough booze could get him drunk. Tony decided he needed to find out. He and Barton acted as the control group. Steve acted as Steve. The party wound down around them.

                Tony still held onto the theory that Steve could get drunk, probably, if only they could find a way to introduce alcohol to his system fast enough. Just drinking it, he would probably drown in the stuff before he got drunk. But it was still _possible_. Theoretically.

                There were only a few of them left now. Pepper was asleep on one of the settees, Steve sitting across from her. Tony was sprawled on the floor with Barton, idly flipping through tracks on the sound system, now turned to low. It was like a sleepover.

                Tony had reached his jazz playlist. _Dream a Little Dream of Me_ came on.

                “I know this song.” Steve sounded delighted.

                “That’s because it’s ancient.” Barton replied. “Turn it off!”

                “You have no taste.” Tony answered. “It’s _romantic_.” He was laughing. Well, giggling. It had been a long time since he had been drunk and giggly. It felt kind of good.

                “Yeah? Well, you should be upstairs getting _romantic_ , shouldn’t you?”

                “Is that an offer?” He was still giggling. He had no dignity.

                “No, no, don’t you usually have a girl or something?” Clint asked. “It’s a party. You always have a girl by the end.”

                “Not anymore.”

                Barton was laughing now. “Lose your touch?”

                “No.” Tony said, happily. “I’m Tony Stark and I do whatever the hell I want.”

                “Like sexy party sex?”

                “ _No_.”

                “ _I’d_ have sexy party sex.” Barton decided. “If I were you.”

                And that was where Steve dropped it in, out of nowhere at all.

                “Leave him alone.” He said. “He’s a biromatic asexual.”

                “A what?”

                Steve said nothing, and Tony, to his own surprise, couldn’t stop laughing.

                “Did you google that?” He asked, when he could catch his breath. “What the hell, Cap? Did you _google_ that? For me?”

                “Isn’t that what everyone does these days when they don’t understand something?” Steve rolled his eyes, but Tony could tell he was embarrassed. Embarrassed, for some reason, over trying to educate himself. Over trying to understand his housemate/landlord/colleague/ _friend_. Only Steve would be embarrassed about that. It made Tony want to go and sing his praises from the top of the Tower (though that may have just been the booze). It made him feel warm inside, warm and wanted and _normal_ (he hoped that wasn’t the booze). It made him feel like there really _was_ a word for it, a word people could use and understand, that stopped him being broken and just meant he operated differently. It made him feel like he was Tony Stark, and he could do, and be, whatever the hell he wanted.

                “Hey, Stark. Stark.” Barton was trying to get his attention. “You have a robot heart, right?”

                “It’s not a robot, it’s a _highly advanced-_ ”

                “Does that make you a _bionic_ biromantic?”

                Tony snorted. “Right. And if I started cycling to work, I’d be a _bicycling_ bionic biromantic.”

                “If you worked out more,” Steve said, slowly considering. “You could be a bicycling bionic biromantic with _biceps_.”

                “Yeah!” Tony was warming to the subject now. “And if I started carrying a lot of cheap pens, I could be a _biro-maniac_ bionic-”

                “All of you,” Pepper, who was not as asleep as previously thought, groaned. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

                There was silence.

                “Given how much you know about science,” Steve said quietly, “I guess you could say you’re a _biologist_ biro-maniac bi-”

                “Steve, you aren’t even drunk.” Pepper said. “Seriously-”

                “Oh, oh!” Barton interrupted. “You’re a _bi_ -llionaire biologist bi… what was the rest?”

                “Biro-maniac.” Steve supplied, innocently. “Bicycling.”

                “Shut _up.”_

                And so they did. Eventually. When every bi-word they could think of had been exhausted and Steve had explained to Barton what a biromantic actually was. Tony listened to him talk, listened to him share what he had learnt and why it was important, and made plans, because Steve, he decided, deserved all the best things in life too; especially if he treated his girlfriends as well as he treated his landlord/team mate/asshole who gave out top-security numbers to one night stands. Steve wouldn’t want to accept gifts, of course, it was Steve. Steve did things because it was right to do them. He wouldn’t realise how much it meant; if he had noticed that Tony hadn’t slept with anyone since their conversation, he wouldn’t comment on it. No, Steve wouldn’t want to be thanked, wouldn’t ask to be treated even half as well as he treated others.

                But he would be forgetting something important. Because Tony was Tony Stark, and he did whatever the hell he wanted.


End file.
